"Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?" Khan asked
Trump. "Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the
United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and
ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one."

On ABC this morning, Trump responded to Khan’s speech. I
don’t know what I expected from Trump. Maybe he would show some
gentleness. Maybe he would show some empathy. Maybe he would refuse to
comment. Maybe he would attack Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s
foreign policy leadership. All of those responses would have been fine.

Trump’s actual response, though, wasn’t fine.

"If you look at his wife, she was standing there," he said, on national television. "She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me."

Why do I mention this? I am not imagining that even an episode as
heartless as this will necessarily change any committed Trump
supporters’ minds. Although the accumulation of Trump’s offenses should
increasingly shame the “respectable” Republicans standing up for him.
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, this starts with you.

But it is
important to document the starkness of the two conceptions of America
that are on clear view, 100 days before this man could become president.
The America of the Khan family, and that of Donald Trump.

In a stunning announcement, the Kochs say their $250 million presidential largess will now go to Senate races.

The Kochs: no good money after bad.

The Koch Brothers have weighed in on the 2016 presidential election by withholding money from Donald Trump:

None of the presidential candidates are aligned with the Koch network
"from a values, and beliefs and policy perspective," Holden said,
citing other determining factors such as "running a good campaign" and
talking about key issues "in a positive productive way."

"Based on that, we're focused on the Senate," Holden said, noting
that the Koch network has devoted around $42 million so far to
television and digital advertising to benefit Republican Senate
candidates.

Donald Trump responded the only way he knows how, by pretending he could give a crap:

"I turned down a meeting with Charles and David Koch," Trump tweeted
on Saturday. "Much better for them to meet with the puppets of politics,
they will do much better!"

The
powerful political network helmed by Charles and David Koch is ruling
out running advertisements intended to hurt Hillary Clinton, another
sign of their insistence on avoiding the presidential race.

The
Koch network has previously said they will not back Republican
candidate Donald Trump, but on Saturday officials told reporters that
they would not run negative Clinton spots, a position taken by some
Republican groups that are uneasy with the controversial GOP
standard-bearer. The group is laser-focused on maintaining and expanding
the Senate majority -- in the midst of a $42 million television
advertising campaign focused on a half-dozen states -- and would only
use Clinton to bash Senate Democratic hopefuls.

Here is the Republican standard bearer being told that the moneyed elite want nothing to do with him. What a bizarre turn of events for the (former?) party of the moneyed elite, wouldn't you say?

None of this would matter so much if it weren't for the disparity between Trump's fundraising and Clinton's. Trump has raised $98,742,091, while Clinton has raised $374,585,440 (includes outside groups). This has led to an incredibly shrinking campaign strategy for Trump, who has narrowed his effort to three key battleground states.

Of course, having a crack campaign ground game would help immensely. If only Trump had the money to pay for it.

The morning after Fox News chief
Roger Ailes resigned, the cable network’s former director of booking
placed a call to the New York law firm hired by 21st Century Fox to
investigate sexual-harassment allegations against Ailes. Laurie Luhn
told the lawyers at Paul, Weiss that she had been harassed by Ailes for
more than 20 years, that executives at Fox News had known about it and
helped cover it up, and that it had ruined her life. “It was
psychological torture,” she later told me.

So far, most of the women who have spoken publicly about harassment
by Ailes in the wake of Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit had said no to
Ailes’s sexual advances. They ran out of hotel rooms, they pulled away
from embraces, they complained or avoided or generally resisted, even
when it hurt their careers. This is the account of a woman who chose to
go along with what Roger Ailes wanted — because he was powerful, because
she thought he could help her advance her career, because she was
professionally adrift and emotionally unmoored.

Doing so helped Luhn’s career for a time — at her peak, she earned
$250,000 a year as an event planner at Fox while, according to both her
own account and four confirming sources, enjoying Ailes’s protection
within the company. But the arrangement required her to do many things
she is now horrified by, including luring young female Fox employees
into one-on-one situations with Ailes that Luhn knew could result in
harassment. “He’s a predator,” she told me. In recent years, Luhn had a
series of mental breakdowns that she attributes to the stress of her
situation, and was even hospitalized for a time.

Non-disclosure agreements have protected these unnamed Fox executives, but how much longer that can last is, well, up to how this scandal unfolds. If more of this kind of stuff comes out -- as it likely will -- the horror that was Fox News will echo throughout the business, or one would think. Hard to know these days.

The legs of Fox News: part of the uniform?

Bonus excerpt from the NY Mag story:

When she had finished dancing, Ailes
told her to get down on her knees in front of him, she said, and put his
hands on her temples. As she recalled, he began speaking to her slowly
and authoritatively, as if he were some kind of Svengali: “Tell me you
will do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. At any time, at
any place when I call. No matter where I call you, no matter where you
are. Do you understand? You will follow orders. If I tell you to put on
your uniform, what are you gonna do, Laurie? WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO,
LAURIE?” Then, she recalled, his voice dropped to a whisper: “What are
you, Laurie? Are you Roger's whore? Are you Roger's spy? Come over
here.” Ailes asked her to perform oral sex, she said.

Later, Ailes showed her the footage of her dancing. She asked him
what he intended to do with it and, she says, he replied, “I am going to
put it in a safe-deposit box just so we understand each other.”

More striking to me, though, is that both sides believe they can use
Trump’s tough-guy act to their advantage. The overarching narrative of
the DNC criticism of Trump was that he is a thin-skinned bully who can’t be trusted to keep his cool when provoked. And here was Trump, in effect, saying the very same thing—to cheers.

Weird but true. Dem side attacks Trump for doing what the Repubs love about him. Hmm.

..Trump's speech got the least positive reviews of any speech we have
tested after the fact: 35% of Americans interviewed last weekend said it
was excellent or good. Of the nine previous speeches we have rated, the
top one was Barack Obama's in August 2008, which 58% of Americans rated
as excellent or good. The lowest-rated speech other than Trump's was
Mitt Romney's in 2012, with 38% excellent or good.

Oh, snap. Worse than even Romney. Didn't Romney refuse to support you? C'mon, don't be bitter.

I also liked hearing in the DailyKos report that Trump's convention was a double-negative. It was dark, and people didn't like it:

The self-reported net impact of the GOP convention was also negative. Overall, 51% of Americans say the convention made them less likely to vote for Trump, while 36% said it made them more likely to vote for him. This is the highest "less likely to vote" percentage for a candidate in the 15 times Gallup has asked this question after a convention.

Plus, it was bounceless:

Donald Trump received no significant bounce following the Republican National Convention, according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll. Hillary Clinton still leads Trump by a single point: 46 percent to 45 percent. These numbers are unchanged from last week.

I saw polls that showed a bit of a bounce, but hey, it was a wimpy one.

After promising a “showbiz”
Republican National Convention that would dazzle the American public,
Donald Trump shrugged off responsibility for staging it after seeing the
higher ratings and production values the Democrats' convention had to
offer this week in Philadelphia.

“I didn’t produce our show — I just showed up for the final speech on Thursday,” Trump told The New York Times in a phone call this week.

I can see what a Trump presidency might look like:

"I didn't lose that war I started, my generals did," said Trump in an attempt to salvage his tattered reputation at home and abroad. "If the generals did half what I told them, we would have been spectacular, believe me."

I can see him on trade, too:

"Congress refused to impose any sanctions on China, so now they're clobbering us," President Trump lamented. "This is why letting Congress make most of the decisions is a real mistake. Believe me when I tell you I'm going to fix that but good."

Then, on his attempt to re-write the Constitution:

Trump was seething after Congress voted down his attempt to amend the Constitution to allow the president to make all economic, foreign-policy, judicial, sports, and healthcare decisions. "This is why, frankly, amending the Constitution should be left solely up to the states. This is a states' rights issue, that I can tell you," Trump said, ignoring the fact that the Constitution was a federal document. Trump attempted to fight back, charging that the U.S. Constitution was "a disaster, a complete disaster," that only he could fix.

Okay, I'll stop fantasizing, but tell me this: Do any of those projections sound like something Trump wouldn't say? I didn't think so.

The Republican Party's convention rocked with "lock her up!" The Democrats' with "USA! USA! USA!" What's going on here?

Clinton has reason to smile: Trump's grump is bumming out the GOP.

The dynamic is two-fold here: One, Donald Trump's convention speech brought almost immediate declarations of "Midnight in America" from a collection of pundits, and, two, the GOP's bad trip in Cleveland allowed Democrats to grab the mantle of "America is already great!"

The Democratic Party as the party of patriotism? Who knew? Here's Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast:

If it’s Morning in America today, it’s a Democratic one. The Republicans are now the party of permanent midnight.

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard thousands of Democrats chant “USA!
USA!” Certainly not in the 1970s, which is what gave Reagan his opening.
This week, though, the Democrats have chanted it over and over.

It’s been a beautifully stage-managed convention. This isn’t my spin,
this is an honest reaction to what I’ve watched. It has surprised me
consistently every night, from a party that hasn’t usually done this all
that well. And the reason it’s been well stage-managed is that it
hasn’t been just Democratic elected officials who’ve sung from the
hymnal. It’s been Americans.

I know that some Republicans feel as if they’ve fallen through the
looking glass. After all, usually they’re the ones chanting “U.S.A.!
U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” And haven’t they spent years suggesting that Barack and
Michelle Obama hate America, and may even support the nation’s enemies?
How did Democrats end up looking like the patriots here?

But the parties aren’t really experiencing a role reversal. President Obama’s speech on
Wednesday was wonderful and inspiring, but when he declared that “what
we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican,” he was
fibbing a bit. It was actually very Republican in substance; the only
difference was that the substance was less disguised than usual. For the
“fanning of resentment” that Mr. Obama decried didn’t begin with Donald
Trump, and most of the flag-waving never did have much to do with true
patriotism.

Think about it: What does it mean to love America? Surely it means
loving the country we actually have. I don’t know about you, but
whenever I return from a trip abroad, my heart swells to see the sheer
variety of my fellow citizens, so different in their appearance, their
cultural heritage, their personal lives, yet all of them — all of us —
Americans.

Will Americans -- especially those that vote -- appreciate this odd dynamic and vote for the party that wants to move forward, not cry into their beer? I sure hope so. Okay, I'm a Democrat (actually I'm to the left of Bernie), but I saw both conventions, one dark and hate-filled and one also dark but love-filled, except, of course, for Donald Trump. He should forever be known as The Bearer of Darkness and Friend of Tyrants.

He's the most popular host on Fox News, and he's an asshole of epic proportions. Will Roger Ailes' departure blow his cover?

Bill O'Reilly is a bully, plain and simple. White people like him. Go figure.

Bill O'Reilly's first claim that the slaves who built the White House were treated and housed well is a completely undocumented, unfounded statement. We know that slaves were instrumental in building the White House based on documented payments to their owners. We don't know how they were treated during construction.

When O'Reilly caught a lot of grief for his, frankly, embarrassing comments, he went ballistic:

When you spend your days soft-pedaling slavery and your nights explaining how misunderstood you are, you're only embarrassing yourself. Please go away.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

When he wanted to tweak his foreign-policy credentials, Trump insisted he knew Putin, had met him. Now, under fire, it's "Putin who?'

Now you're quoting my old statements. What's up with that, huh?

Fact checkers, reporters, even ordinary people that actually listen have noticed that the truth is a sometime thing with Donald Trump. "Pathological liar" is a term that describes such behavior. Now it comes out again:

We knew he was a political and foreign-policy Neanderthal. Now he's proving it.

Orange Man turning red?

A firestorm is igniting around Donald Trump's latest suggestion that it would be great if Putin and his hacking henchmen went after Hillary Clinton's emails. Here's his original statement:

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000
emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said, staring directly into the
cameras during a press conference. “I think you will probably be
rewarded mightily by our press.”

Most people, even his fans, wouldn't be able to pick out Atrios in a crowd.
I can't recall him posting his picture on his blog. So this is a public service.

Atrios of Eschaton -- AKA Duncan Black -- agrees with The Atlantic's Peter Beinart about one of Bill Clinton's remarks last night:

But in between, Clinton said something dreadful: “If you’re a
Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here
and help us win and make a future together, we want you.” The problem is
in the assumption. American Muslims should be viewed exactly the same
way other Americans are. If they commit crimes, then they should be
prosecuted, just like other Americans. But they should not have to prove
that they “love America and freedom” and “hate terror” to “stay here.”
Their value as Americans is inherent, not instrumental. Their role as
Americans is not to “help us win” the “war on terror.”.

Atrios is as smart, if a little cynical, a commentator as you'll find on the Internet, and I've never posted any disagreement with him before. (As Atrios might say, "And that's important because why?") Because I want to show why for a hoot.

Bill Clinton is being political here -- and wisely I feel -- because many voters, I'm afraid, are knuckleheads. (Okay, who's cynical?) I remember that one of Clinton's standout lines of his term in office was something like "If you work hard and play by the rules..." followed by "deserve a decent retirement" or "should be able to send your kid to college without going broke" or "deserve not to go bankrupt if you encounter serious health problems." Make sense, right? How could you disagree?

Well, I happen to feel that if you don't work hard but play by the rules, or work hard put don't always play by the rules, or don't especially work hard and only mostly play by the rules, you still don't deserve a number of fates that Americans endure because the wealthy are hording it all at the top.

The average knucklehead deserves a better life than we get here in America. You don't have to be Paul Ryan to deserve healthcare. (Ryan wouldn't give it to you even if you were as good as he is.) This is something the adept politician like Bill Clinton understands. So he sugarcoats a line to get it considered, for it to hit home. It's a small thing to be a bit condescending to Muslims to enforce the point that we should fucking lighten up on them. Just sayin'.

Donald Trump has been downright odious as a candidate for president. Now he rooting for Russian hackers. Still got your vote? Eww.

The anatomy of a political party: He's on my side!

Is he really on your side because he says he's pro-life (wasn't before), pro-conservative judges (used to be pro-Hillary), and pro-military (never served, avoided the draft, didn't enlist when he had the chance)?

If you think so, GOP, if you think so, his other nutty, nasty, and hateful comments aside.

But now he's hoping the Russians succeed at hacking more emails, especially if they're Hillary's. Sounds like rooting for our adversaries. I thought that was treasonous. Could be wrong. We'll see. Is this how you roll, GOP?

“If they hacked, they probably have her
33,000 emails. I hope they do,” Trump said at a press conference at his
resort in Doral, Florida.

The Republican presidential nominee was referring to the widely held
suspicion that Russia is responsible for hacking the Democratic National
Committee’s servers, resulting in the leak of tens of thousands of
emails just days before the party’s nominating convention in
Philadelphia.

Trump said that he hoped the hackers had also accessed Clinton’s
private email servers. “They probably have her 33,000 emails that she
lost and deleted.”

Trump then addressed the rogue nation directly, saying “Russia, if
you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are
missing.”

By actively hoping that American servers were hacked by another
nation, Trump broke an unwritten but cardinal rule of American public
office: You don’t root against the United States, even when your
political opponent is in power.

Is this the new GOP, the Trump GOP? Maybe so. Holy crap. Is it possible that, for the GOP, the new norms are there are no norms?

Richard Nixon was hounded from office because of a thing called Watergate. Is the Russian hacking of DNC computers less of a deal?

Connections have existed for a while now.

As improbable as it first seemed, there's a true scandal in the making. We don't need a smoking gun or a quid pro quo, but the effect is the same. Nixon didn't have to "order" the DNC break-in at the Watergate, but he sure was up to his eyeballs in dirty tricks. The same may certainly be said for Putin. For example, from TPM:

Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming
bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. More
seriously, but relatedly, many believe Trump is an admirer and would-be
emulator of Putin's increasingly autocratic and illiberal rule. But
there's quite a bit more to the story. At a minimum, Trump appears to
have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to
Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian
foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies
which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is
also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of
evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a
non-tacit alliance between the two men.

WASHINGTON — Six weeks before the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks published an archive of hacked Democratic National Committee emails
ahead of the Democratic convention, the organization’s founder, Julian
Assange, foreshadowed the release — and made it clear that he hoped to
harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency.

Mr. Assange’s remarks in a June 12 interview
underscored that for all the drama of the discord that the disclosures
have sown among supporters of Bernie Sanders — and of the unproven speculation that the Russian government provided the hacked data
to WikiLeaks in order to help Donald J. Trump — the disclosures are
also the latest chapter in the long-running tale of Mr. Assange’s
battles with the Obama administration.

In
the interview, Mr. Assange told a British television host, Robert
Peston of the ITV network, that his organization had obtained “emails
related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,” which he
pronounced “great.” He also suggested that he not only opposed her
candidacy on policy grounds, but also saw her as a personal foe.

Now we hear that both cyber experts and the U.S. government feel growing confidence that Putin-connected hackers are responsible for the original hack of the DNC computers.

Many U.S. officials and cyber security experts in and out of government
are convinced that state-sponsored Russian hackers are the ones who
stole 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee and leaked
them to the public just in time to disrupt the Democrats' national
convention in Philadelphia.

A final piece of this puzzle is the stream of pro-Putin and, frankly, pro-Russian remarks by Donald Trump, implying that he'd not necessarily come to the aid of NATO members threatened by Putin:

Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, appeared to make U.S.
military support for NATO member states conditional on whether those
states have met their financial obligations to the bloc, which has
served as the cornerstone of global security after World War II. The
comments, in an interview with The New York Times,
represent a marked departure from the security policy of every
presidential nominee from either of the two major parties since NATO’s
founding in 1949.

Read the article I linked to in the Atlantic or the NYTimes' interview linked in the excerpt. They're both pretty freaky.

We're in a new realm here. Many of us in the sanity-based universe had reasons to fear a Trump presidency. But now we've got reasons to fear the implications of an apparent Putin-Assange-Trump cyber alliance. Does America want a future controlled by this unfathomable partnership? And is it even legal? The word may be passé, but this is freaky.

This story may grow, or it may not. I'm betting on its growing. Already the Trump camp is under increasing fire to release Trump's tax returns. Before Putingate (okay, maybe it won't be called that), it was problematic. After, not releasing them can cause a continued uproar. Stay tuned.

Gabriel Sherman, the unauthorized biographer who broke this story, has now exposed another apparent problem for Fox News. He reports that Fox News executives have been carrying water for Ailes by covering up for their boss. Uh oh:

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Brian, I just want to speak to that because I think
this is where the story is going forward, the Murdochs are looking to
the existing leadership at Fox News as possible replacements for Ailes.
The critical issue is that, a lot of the main players, especially Bill
Shine, Roger Ailes’ deputy who is in charge of programming and the Fox
Business Network currently, played an integral role in the cover up of
these sexual harassment claims. I reported yesterday based on internal
documents --

Not so funny anymore.

Here's where the story stands today. Fox News may find itself liable for
encouraging or allowing sexual harassment to continue, and, at the very least, more heads will roll. At worst, the scandal will envelope more executives and empower the women of Fox -- who were hamstrung by non-disclosure and internal arbitration agreements -- to tell their own personal stories, leading to further unraveling.

Bill O'Reilly, as many may remember, barely squeaked by with his own sexual harassment case (here's a fascinating if disturbing court document). Now, he's just another Fox News man behaving badly, with echoes from a disturbing divorce case. O'Reilly never worried because Ailes had his back, and now O'Reilly returns the favor.

One weird by-product is Donald Trump's full-throated defense of Ailes. What does he think he'll accomplish with that, other than further alienating women voters? Oh, I forgot: Poorly educated white males are his base. He could give a rat's ass for women.

Of course, Donald Trump would say, "Women love me, that I can tell you!"

Update. Fox News executive vice president Michael Clemente has announced he's leaving the network. Is this the first extra head to roll or a rat fleeing a sinking ship?

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Cyber experts agree: Putin is behind Wikileaks' DNC email leak. If Putin has his thumb on the scales for Trump, what do disenchanted progressives do?

Punked by Putin on behalf of Trump. What does that tell you?

It should be clear by now that the mutual admiration society that is Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump -- especially in light of Trump's weak stand behind NATO -- is both dangerous and, to a certain extent, treasonous. What presidential candidate opens his yap and says he won't stand behind a treaty that has held back the Soviet Union, and now greater Russia, for 60 years?

We know that Donald Trump has trouble raising capital -- Deutsche Bank is the only bank in the West that will still deal with Trump -- and has for some years looked to Russian interests, in Putin's orbit, for money to bail out his shaky deals.

Now a Wikileaks release of DNC emails that disparage -- only by implication -- the Clinton campaign occurs on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. Naturally, the Clinton campaign blames the Russians, but a funny thing happened on the way to Trump's outraged reaction: It turns out that even the experts in the field point to Putin and his Russkiy hackers as responsible for the email hack and leak.

My question to the still disgruntled progressives threatening to either vote for Trump or libertarian Gary Johnson is: What part of letting this capitalist thug aided and abetted by his communist/capitalist thug become president sounds hunky dory to you?

Get a grip, people. Even if you believe that Hillary Clinton is in the tank for Wall Street and whatever other nefarious American elites, it would be batshit crazy to help a known sleazeball tycoon with ties to Russian oligarchs become president. The worst that Hillary can do -- besides also supporting A LOT OF THE PROGRESSIVE POLICIES SHE AND BERNIE SANDERS ALREADY AGREE ON -- is maybe let Wall Street keep being Wall Street. Big fucking whoop.

Here's the deal, in a nutshell:

The right wing has spent millions besmirching Hillary on nothing-burgers like Benghazi, the emails, and countless other absurdities because they feel she IS A THREAT TO THEM. Not a good reason to help Trump.

She is a known quantity, and that known quantity is a pragmatist that makes incremental progress either by throwing the moneyed interests a bone so that they'll back her center-left policies or she gets thrown a bone, a morsel, by the moneyed interests because she lets them have victories that bring them an increase in their wealth and power. BUT SHE STILL GETS SOMETHING FOR US THAT WAY. Not liking this way of doing business isn't a good reason to help Trump.

Her politics are both to the left of Barrack Obama AND more likely to deliver than he was when dealing with the Republicans. So, we move forward. WE'RE NOT GETTING THE BERNIE SANDERS REVOLUTION WE WANTED THIS CYCLE, so let's accept this incremental leap forward. Wanting to tear down the whole damned thing with a Trump vote is not a good reason to help Trump.

Sorry for all the yelling. Read this, this, this, and this, and then vote for Donald Trump. Or please don't. Thank you.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Donald Trump is all in with authoritarianism. And freedom-loving Republicans are good with that?

Washington Post's July 22nd Op-Eds. Says a mouthful, eh?

The verdict is in across the political spectrum, and Donald Trump has frightened a number of people, including those who had once believed the Republican Party would somehow remain sane. No such luck. The tweet of the week:

If Leni Riefenstahl were alive, Trump would hire her to film this speech. Then not pay her.

Daily Kos's Abreviated Pundit Round-up gives us another look at the impending cataclysm that a Trump presidency might bring: Sample from Bloomberg View:

In short: It was the most disturbing, demagogic and deluded
acceptance speech by any major party nominee in the modern political
era. It’s no wonder so many Republicans -- including Senator Ted Cruz of
Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich -- are refusing to endorse Trump.
When the idea of “voting your conscience” becomes a source of division
within a party, something is terribly wrong.

Republicans remain skeptical that their party will unite behind their presumptive nominee.
Just 38% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say
the party will “solidly unite” behind Trump; 54% say disagreements in
the party will keep many Republicans from supporting him. These views
are virtually unchanged since March,
amid the GOP primary contest. By contrast, 72% of Democratic voters say
their party will solid unite behind Clinton; in March, 64% expected
their party to unite behind Clinton if she became the nominee.

So, Trump is a divider, not a uniter. But we knew that. The wall he's building is between himself and the voters he needs. Hmm. Go figure.

Oh, and who wants to bet that the Republican National Convention will aleviate this problem?

Friday, July 1, 2016

We as a nation have steadily moved to expand rights for women, gays, and minority voting. Republicans' go-to reaction is "Just Say No."

Republicans pass bad laws and courts fix them. Weird mechanism.

It's past time we recognized that Republican-led states spend an inordinate amount of time passing laws that restrict abortion, gay rights, voting rights, and, more recently, bathroom rights to transgender people.

This is expensive, if nothing else. These same states tend to be against Obamacare and expanded Medicaid to the poor. They go so far as to refuse billions of dollars of virtually free federal money, having the effect of denying hospitals payments they would receive from the feds under the law. These same states often decide to drug test welfare recipients, a practice also proven to be a waste of money, as welfare recipients quite rarely test positive.

About the American Human

The American Human is written by Calvin Ross, a retired teacher who at various points in life has been a musician, woodworker, restaurateur, narrator, English teacher in Japan, novelist, technology journalist, and private tutor to Japanese children here in the U.S.

Happily residing in the wine country of Sonoma County north of San Francisco, Calvin has lived in the Philippines, the Netherlands, and the aforementioned Japan, as well as in Chicago, Colorado, Georgia, and many different towns in California, including, of all places, the Mojave Desert.

Calvin, you may note quickly, is a liberal progressive who doesn't think being called a socialist is all that bad, especially since he sort of would like living in Denmark if it weren't so cold. He blogs because he can.